


If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart

by magical_realism27



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Character Study, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magical_realism27/pseuds/magical_realism27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer always had looked good in green.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart

Sometimes it’s easier not to compartmentalize.

She fills her lips in with her brightest red lipstick every day, and it never gets old, or easier.

She always wears her tallest heels, and she counts the blisters on her feet to fall asleep. She’s heavy with dead weight, she carries everything she took with her out of the forest; out of Rosewood. Still she sleeps deeply.

She hasn’t been Spencer Hastings in eleven years.

Her apartment is large and cold and she’s never felt more like she belongs.

She wonders if Alison ever did this; wrapped herself in loneliness. Or if it warped her. But Allison had always been strong as marble, Spencer soft as water. Except when Spencer had struck her. Not once, not twice. Not until her hands were bloody and the blood was on Alison’s throat and face and in her hair. The fire raged around them and Spencer had known she was safe.

Alison wasn’t the competitive type.

_She didn’t make me do it_. _Kill her_. Spencer had explained to Emily. _She didn’t provoke me_.

_Was it mercy?_ Emily asked, because mercy was always so easy to understand.

_Yes._ Spencer gave her. _For me._

And then she was gone.

She’d taken trains to New York and West Virginia and Illinois. She’d been Melissa French and Natalie Kingston and Andrea Schneider. In Maryland she was Samantha Marin, and she only stayed a week.

Now she’s in Seattle, now she’s Mikayla Norman, now she knows mercy is easy to understand and hard to learn. 

She works as a waitress and calls everyone “darling” but especially the men with the leering faces and the wedding bands.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” One had asked once.

“Mona.” Her red lips had sputtered, and she didn’t know why.

She didn’t know a lot.

Her boss with the ruddy dye-job and bow-and-arrow neck tattoo calls her ‘Kayla’ and invites her out every weekend. Kayla declines.

Running is easy when nothing is chasing you.

Someone had said that to her once. She’s forgotten who, but sometimes she imagines it was Aria.

She forces herself to stay up until one a.m every night and takes a Valium before she gets into bed. Her sheets are a nice, cool cotton that feel like silk under the body she hasn’t called her own in eleven years.

She talks to herself a lot. _I should get a haircut_ or _maybe this weekend I’ll finally make a recipe from that cookbook I bought_. She never plays music.

“Ever been to Pennsylvania?” A patron had asked her one time, clearly bubbly from beer.

“Let me top you off, darling.”

 

Spencer does her lips first when she puts on her face. _“Spence, don’t be mad.”_

Then her eyes, mascara and liquid kohl. “ _I did it for you, for all of us._ ”

She combs through her hair, counting to one hundred. _“We’ll burn up if we stay here.”_

She wears her cheeriest yellow underwear. _“You can’t hit me!”_

She picks out a green dress. _“You were my favorite.”_

There’s a run in her favorite pantyhose. “ _I hate you.”_

Her tallest heels are black _. “Please, please.”_

Spencer was soft as water.

And adept at holding her breath.

She looks in the mirror. She smirks; her reflection doesn’t. Spencer always had looked good in green.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> The title is from the book "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood


End file.
